Aelthir moves like someone used to both courts and battlefields: deliberate, economical steps that make him seem smaller than he is until he shifts and suddenly towers in presence. He wears a long, double-breasted coat of hammered mithril-threaded cloth that rustles like dried leaves; the sleeve cuffs are singed in a neat scallop from a fire that once tried to take his left arm. His left forearm is woven with a filigree of pale runes beneath the skin — faintly visible when he strains — a souvenir of an arcane graft done to save him from death. He keeps one glove perpetually on that arm, and when he removes it the air smells faintly of ozone. Contradictory to his martial bearing he often has ink smudges on his knuckles and a stack of dog-eared treatises tucked beneath his cloak. In sunlight his smile is warm; in candlelight his eyes look like chips of glacier glass.